RECORD • PRODUCE • PERFORM
Jan Hammer Exclusive THE SYNTH LEGEND SPEAKS
MASTERCLASS SECRETS OF IZOTOPE RX
Synth Soloing by George Whitty Part 2
HIDDEN TREASURES
Sound Design Harmonic Sequencing
WORLD EXCLUSIVE
REVIEWS
Hands-On With 11 Of The World's Rarest Synths...
ANTARES
AUTO-TUNE PRO
IK MULTIMEDIA
UNO SYNTH
BEEPSTREET
ZEEON
SONICSMITH
SQUAVER P1+
More!
CONTENTS 11.18 DEPARTMENTS
ANTARES Auto-Tune Pro
36
IK MULTIMEDIA UNO
28
6
33
38
THE ART OF SYNTH SOLOING: PART 2 George Whitty
30
SOUND DESIGN Harmonic Sequencing: Your First Forays Into Microtones…
CENTRANCE MixerFace R4
HIDDEN TREASURES: HANDS-ON WITH 11 OF THE WORLD’S RAREST SYNTHS
We visit the Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project to discover 11 synths that time forgot… Housed within an unassuming 30,000-square-foot building just outside Philadelphia, this massive collection of historically significant music gear is a lovingly restored and curated time capsule of amazing gear. We take our pick and present our 11 favorites…
JAN HAMMER
10
“Over the years I had sketches that I knew I was going to finish, and I finally went back and finished them.” One of the pioneering musicians who embraced the Minimoog as a lead instrument is back with Seasons Pt. 1 — his first album of all-new music in 18 years!
COMMUNITY
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RECREATING THE 10CC CHOIR
In the pantheon of legendary productions, 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love” ranks among the most respected tracks of all time. We recreated the element that glues the track together: A painstakingly multi-tracked set of vocal loops, consisting of 48 tracks of voices per note…
NEW GEAR Products from Presonus, Nektar, Accusonus and more
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66
ELECTRONIC GUITAR Pads with Ableton Live’s Grain Delay
FIVE QUESTIONS Joe Palmaccio on the delicate art of mastering
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MASTER CLASS The Secrets of iZotope RX
40
BEEPSTREET Zeeon
42
UJAM VIRTUAL DRUMMER Heavy, Phat & Solid
44
22
APESOFT apeMatrix
46
SONICSMITH Squaver P1+ & Converter+
54
HOW TO
58
TECHNIQUE Creative Reverb Tricks
Electronic Musician (ISSN 0884-4720) is published monthly by Future PLC, 28 East 28th Street, 12th floor, New York, NY 10016. Periodicals Postage Paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608. Canada Returns to be sent to Bleuchip International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Electronic Musician, P.O. Box 232, Lowell, MA 01853. Electronic Musician is a trademark of Future PLC. All material published in Electronic Musician is copyrighted (©) 2018 by Future PlC All rights reserved. Reproduction of material appearing in Electronic Musician is prohibited without written permission. Publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited manuscripts, photos, or artwork. All product information is subject to change; publisher assumes no responsibility for such changes. All listed model numbers and product names are manufacturers’ registered trademarks.
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M A G A Z I N E
Vol. 34 No. 11
November 2018
www.emusician.com FOLLOW US twitter.com/EM_Magazine facebook.com/ElectronicMusicianMagazine instagram.com/electronicmusicianmag CONTENT Guest Editor James Russell Group Editor-In-Chief, Music Daniel Griffiths Production Editor Alice Pattillo alice.pattillo@futurenet.com Art Editor Steve Dawson steve.dawson@futurenet.com Editor keyboardmag.com Jon Regen kbwebeditor@gmail.com Moderator The Keyboard Corner David Bryce Editors at Large Geary Yelton, Mike Levine, Francis Preve Contributors David Battino, Michael Cooper, Marty Cutler, Sarah Jones, Jerry Kovarsky, Steve La Cerra, Jon Regen, Michael Ross, Barbara Schultz FUTURE MUSIC GROUP BUSINESS Chief Revenue Officer Luke Edson luke.edson@futurenet.com Advertising Director Jonathan Brudner jonathan.brudner@futurenet.com Advertising Director Mari Deetz mari.deetz@futurenet.com Advertising Director Jason Perl jason.perl@futurenet.com Advertising Director Scott Sciacca scott.sciacca@futurenet.com MANAGEMENT Managing Director Julian March Chief Operations Officer Aaron Asadi Group Content Director Paul Newman Commercial Finance Director Dan Jotcham REPRINTS AND PERMISSIONS
For article reprints please contact our reprint coordinator at Wright’s Reprints: 877.652.5295 Please direct all subscription orders, inquiries, and address changes to: 888.266.5828, outside the US 978.667.0364, emmag@ computerfulfillment.com Back Issues are available for $10 each at 800.289.9919, 978.667.0364, emmag@computerfulfillment.com
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Futureplc PLC Bath BA1 1UA Future is a Quay public House, The Ambury, Chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne company quoted on Non-executive chairman Peter Allen the London Stock Chief financial officer Penny Ladkin-Brand Exchange (symbol: FUTR) Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244 www.futureplc.com
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COMMUNITY
Editor’s Note
The Future of the Past What is it that turns one synth into a lauded classic instrument and another into an unloved relic? The current zeitgeist of music technology is analog emulation — we’ve finally got enough computing power to recreate the world’s most beloved circuits in virtual form, and recreate them we have, and then some! But is it just me, or is today’s analog fetish just making us crack the same old whips again and again? 808s, check… Junos, there’s loads of ’em… we’re up to our endcheeks in Minimoogs, and at my last count, there were at least 13
ADVENTURES IN DIY
Pultec emulations out there, with more hitting the online shelves with every passing year. Of course, for every iconic synth, there are a handful of forgotten treasures hoping for their moments in the spotlight, so isn’t it time we unearthed a few gems? This month, we’ve smuggled Geary Yelton into the Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project — the US’s ‘Strategic Synth Reserve’, if you will — to investigate the oddities that lie within and bring them all to you in marvelous technicolor.
But this issue isn’t all about dusting off the past — our Masterclass this month is firmly rooted in the state of the art. iZotope’s RX software is at the forefront of the audio restoration game, boasting a near-magical array of machine-learned algorithms that’ll solve audio problems you never even knew you had. On page 50, Mike Levine takes RX out of the post-production studio and shows us how to use it in more musical contexts. If you haven’t tried RX yet, I suggest you give it a go as soon as you can… that is, unless you have a moral objection to voodoo.
JAMES RUSSELL GUEST EDITOR james.russell@futurenet.com
BY DAVID BATTINO
Wall of Sound… and Video
I
n 1966, Steve Reich turned a single loop into a haunting piece of music called “Come Out” (see Figure 1). He started with a recording of a teenager saying “come out to show them,” then gradually offset and layered the phrase to produce a wash of sound. In my book The Art of Digital Music, I asked Reich how he navigates the fine line between repetition and boredom. “Ha ha! That’s a very good question,” he replied. “In ‘Come Out,’ you first hear the whole sentence so you understand the context. Once it starts, you hear the phrase over and over, but then very slowly you hear — what is this? It seems like it’s coming apart. And, literally, it is coming apart. You’ve got the same phrase on two channels of the stereo tape and one is moving ahead of the other ever so slowly until finally it feels like reverberation. Then it feels like it’s shaking, and then it feels like cumma-cumma, showdem-showdem. And actually, you’re never hearing any repetition in that sense. This thing is constantly in motion.” Reich laughed, “Repetition by itself is a cheap trick. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s artistically irrelevant. But it’s a gold mine if applied with some intelligence and some added feature that will make it riveting.” In 2018, that added feature could be video. Inspired by “Come Out,” I uploaded a short music video to YouTube and set up a web page to play nine copies, automatically looping each as it finished (see Figure 2). There’s no sync, so each video starts playing as soon as it loads, offset randomly from its companions to create infinite combinations of sound and visuals. The browser adds another random delay when each video loops, increasing the variation. Better Embed. To loop a YouTube video, you simply use the embedding form of the URL (www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID) and add two parameters: loop and playlist. For example, to loop a video with the ID YzuG6922zX4, the basic URL would be www.youtube.com/embed/YzuG6922 zX4?loop=1&playlist=YzuG6922zX4. The loop parameter takes binary values: 1 means true and 0 means false. The playlist parameter is a hack for browsers
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Fig. 1. The New York Times called Steve Reich “our greatest living composer”. His early works feature intricately layered loops that phase against each other.
Fig. 2. Entering a YouTube ID at www. batmosphere.com/loopwall loads and loops nine copies of a video, randomly offsetting the start times. Here I played a metal drum tuned to a pentatonic scale so all the notes would harmonize.
that don’t understand the loop parameter; by setting the next video ID in the playlist to the original ID, you make playback repeat. If you want to play multiple videos at once without setting up your own web page, you can paste this URL into multiple browser windows. To make each video start automatically, add &autoplay=1 to the URL. (Note that mobile browsers typically play only one video at a time and ignore the autoplay parameter.) I’ve posted more background on my demo page at www.batmosphere.com/loopwall. For even more variation, play different videos simultaneously, choosing musical parts that are in Fig. 3. The TCP:Reich the same key. Because iOS app (free) lets you rhythms will never line up, experiment with Steve this works best with pads and Reich’s composition techniques. This ambiences. Years ago, Brian module simulates Eno, also a Reich fan, created phasing tape loops. installations with multiple Dragging the slider changes the speed autoreverse cassette decks of one loop, creating playing different-length tapes. drift; dragging the A free iOS app (see Figure 3) waveform changes the time offset. makes it easier than ever to try these techniques yourself.
Blocks party!
ROLI’S ENTRY-LEVEL MPE SYSTEM GETS NEW HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE TWEAKS…
B
locks are Roli’s entry-level range of ‘multidimensional’ controllers. You might have seen these distinctive rubbery controllers in the hands of cutting-edge music-makers for the past couple of years but now they’ve had a major overhaul that’s set to drive them even more mainstream. Some in the audio community had a few reservations with the way these innovative controllers worked, especially with their iOS app Noise, on which the whole system hinged. Now, in a significant update to the Blocks system, Roli have unveiled new hardware devices and — crucially — some adjustments to Blocks that begin to address its main criticisms.
NEW AND IMPROVED The big news on the hardware front is the arrival
expressive, rubbery keys that allow for string-like modulation and pitchbends. At $300, it’s far cheaper than the current Seaboard entry point, the Rise 25, giving players who want to buy into the expressive keyboard controller a far more wallet-friendly option. You can also slot multiple units together to create larger keyboard setups. As with the rest of the Blocks range, the Seaboard Block is wireless and communicates with iOS and desktop devices via Bluetooth. It can be used alongside the existing Lightpad, Live and Loop Blocks, along with another new hardware addition, the Touch Block, which mirrors the buttonbased format of the Live and Loop Blocks and enables you to adjust the sensitivity and behaviour of the Seaboard and Lightpad Blocks.
of the Seaboard Block, a considerably more
UNSHACKLED
affordable take on Roli’s flagship keyboard range.
Of particular note is the fact that this new hardware Block brings with it a new software application, Equator Player — a desktop tool based
It’s based on the same technology as the larger models, featuring 24 ‘keywaves’ — the multi-
on Roli’s impressive Equator sound engine. The player will come stocked with 100 preset sounds, all designed to make the most of the MPE format either as a standalone application or as a plugin with a DAW. This is significant as it finally means that users can make the most of Blocks’ multidimensional expression in a studio setting without being shackled to the restrictive Noise app. This follows in the wake of an update for Noise itself, bringing the important addition of audio export, along with a work-in-progress Android version. We’re told by Roli to expect more development and updates from Dashboard, the application designed to bridge the gap between Blocks and third-party software. On this front, we’ve already seen the recent release of Instant Delay from Unfiltered Audio — an effect designed to be used with the Lightpad Block, which is free to download for Lightpad owners. It’s early days still, but it looks like the Blocks system might be on the road to achieving its full potential.
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HIGHLIGHTS Eight pressure-sensitive pads • Nine 30mm faders • LCD display, transport buttons, eight encoders, pitch/mod wheels • Pedal inputs • New Nektarine VST/VST3/ AU integration, exclusive to the T series • Supported instruments will map automatically once loaded • Patches can be browsed and loaded right from the keyboard • Up to eight instruments can be layered in Multi Mode • T4 (49 keys) is $349.99; T6 (61 keys) is $399.99
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TARGET MARKET Producers,
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